#examines fingernails through gloves‚ what do you mean‚ of course this chapter is on time

[edupunkn00b]

Progression, Chapter 6: Eyes Closed

Photo by edupunkn00b

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The Muse finds someone who needs his help. Written for @imnotgrimimjustagrumpyreaper's @dukeceit-week-2024, Day 6: Body Swap WC: 1303 - CW: a child in peril, minor character deaths (unnamed characters, not the child) A little mind-bendy (that's a bit of a given with Remus' Illusion powers, though.)

The Muse ran.

Broken bits of brick from the latest building lost to ivy battered bare feet and the tangled underbrush threatened to drag him to the ground. He stumbled, feet wetted with crushed moss and blood slipping on the forest floor.

“I see you!” A deep voice sing-songed and echoed against the trees, laughter coming from everywhere at once. "You can't hide from us!"

His lungs burned and he’d lost count of the scratches and bruises on his shins, his arms, his face. They’d first spotted him at dusk down by the creek and he’d been on the run ever since. Every time he thought he’d escaped, every time he thought he’d hidden well enough and long enough, they’d see him trying to sneak away and once again, they’d pick up their hunt through the dark woods.

He dodged to the left, crashing blindly into the thicket and hoping it might slow his much larger pursuers. Thorns grabbed at his skirt, tearing at his skin but he kept running.

His skirt?

The Muse forced his eyes open and stared up at the bright ceiling lights in his room. No, not his skirt… there was someone else. Someone close. Someone hurt. 

But they were getting further away and it was getting harder to fight through the buzzing shield around his room. The Muse rolled onto his stomach. His hands and knees were scraped raw, muscles screaming under the strain of movement. When he closed his eyes, he saw the forest, tasted the moss and dirt. And blood.

Inch by inch, he dragged himself to his door. Using first the handle, then the frame, he pulled himself to his feet and palmed the control. His own weight pushed the door open and he fell past the shield and out into the hallway.

Color and light and ice and fire consumed him and filled him to bursting. The world crackled through his nerves, through every cell. A tiny child laughing, clapping her hands when her doll sang. A couple yelling horrible things to each other, unbreakable dishes crashing against the wall and bouncing off back at them. The rush of air as a man fell. Fingers torn and bleeding and…

The Muse shook his head, searching for the girl in the woods. Her sweater had been itchy, sticky with sweat but it protected her arms so she kept it on. Feet numb, knees bleeding, she shivered now, tucked between gnarled tree roots, a crook filled with mold and petrified rat droppings. She pressed both hands to her mouth, muffling her pants as large men—Powereds, too, too large to be Traditionals—tromped over her hiding place.

-”Jannie…”- he pushed past the sharp static of Jannie’s usual shield. He wasn’t supposed to, he knew he wasn't supposed to, that it hurt them both when he did, but this was important. Cold ice slashed at his mind as the static broke. -”Jannie! Jannie, help us…”- His eyes fell shut again as the vision took him.

~

“Love?” Luc’s voice was so very far away. “Love… wake up!” Orange light bled through Janus’s eyelids and he burrowed deeper under the covers, hiding from the soft hand shaking his shoulder, the insistent voices in his head. “Jan!”

-”Jannie…”- The desperation in The Muse’s voice finally pulled him from his dream—nightmare? No, not a dream. -”Jannie, help us!”-

“The Muse is out,” Janus mumbled, shivering under the warmth of their comforter.

“I know, love,” Luc nodded, hands warm at his shoulder, his cheek. Janus finally opened his eyes and noticed the bright glow of Luc’s. “You were…” 

Janus became aware of the tears streaming down his face, his neck. The pillow was soaked. His throat was raw and his palms bleeding from tiny half-moon impressions. 

Luc’s eyes dimmed and he brushed gentle fingers over Janus’ cheekbone. “You were…inconsolable without…” His voice shook and he let his hand fall away. Janus’ heart thudded in his chest at the lost contact, a bird fighting its way out of its cage.

“It’s okay…” He swallowed back a sob, the temporary easement of Luc’s powers letting through the full force of everything The Muse shared. He nodded, chasing his hand. “It—than—thank you. He—”

Luc touched him again and Janus smiled, accepting his power. He sucked in a breath and met Luc’s bright orange eyes. “He needs me,” he whispered, already pushing away the covers.

“I know.”

~

-“Muse… Muse, can you hear me?”- Golden light flickered through the leaves and The Muse reached out from his hiding place, fingers scraping against lichen-covered bark.

“Jannie?” he called, high pitched and broken. And not nearly quiet enough.

“I found her!” Rough hands grabbed at him, pulling his hair and yanking him out from beneath the fallen tree. “Got you, you little—“

The man’s hands grazed bare skin and The Muse saw through his eyes now. A girl shivered before him, dress torn, hair matted with blood and dirt, rivers of tears marking her face. He released her and she dropped to the forest floor, curled in a ball.

Rage and pride coursed through his veins. Filthy lust. But Jannie was there, too, and strong, steady hands circled the faint strains of the man's guilt. Strangling it. Strengthening it.

The Muse pushed back against the foul thoughts in the man’s head and shared with him the girl’s fear, the sting and burn of her cuts, the fire in an ankle that surely must be broken.

The man staggered under the weight of it. “No, please,” he muttered. “Stop!” To The Muse or to Jannie. Or maybe to himself.

They didn’t stop. The Muse pressed both hands to the man’s head and pushed in everything he'd seen. The fighting couple. The child who’d touched a stove. The man who’d fallen—jumped?—from the factory ladder. Another man, hungry and cold, sifting through the bins outside the same factory.

Everything.

He pushed it all into the pursuer’s head. With a strangled cry, he dropped to the forest floor. His friends ran to his body and The Muse touched each of them in turn, adding the memories of the one who fell before him until the bodies of a half dozen Powered rogues lay in a heap around the little girl.

-”Go home,”- he said to her as gently as he could.

Crying, she stumbled away from the men's bodies. The Muse stayed with her until she reached the edge of town and the world around him faded to black.

~

The floor was cool against The Muse’s back and a soft blanket had been draped over his chest. Fresh stitches itched his hands and his legs. He opened his eyes just in time to see Papa Bear slip through the door, leaving him alone with Jannie.

Jannie’s hand—his bare hand! He’d taken off his gloves and just touched him—his hand was so warm and curved perfectly over his cheek. The Muse melted into the touch, the warmth. Jannie brushed away the tears leaking from his eyes. “I got ‘em, Jannie,” he whispered. “I got ‘em all.” It was important he say it. The words made it real, made the vision real. It was all real. He'd made it real and he’d done something good this time.

“I know,” Jannie said aloud, voice breaking. “Ro and Virge found the girl and brought her to her parents.”

The Muse smiled, wincing at the tug of stitches he hadn’t noticed along his jaw. -“We did it”-

“We did,” Jannie said, so quiet The Muse had to strain to hear. “Rest now, Muse. Rest…” His eyes were half-closed when Jannie slowly pushed up to his feet and shuffled to the door.

As the door sighed closed, the last thing The Muse saw was Jannie falling into Lucas’ arms, the hallway lit in the bright orange glow of his eyes.

[where-the-wind-is]

A Little Birdy Told Me

The Arcana

Masterlist

Chapter 18

Your peers said nothing as you carried the jeweled dagger on you for the rest of the day.

Valdemar said nothing as you brought it to work with you in the morning.

No one said anything for the days that followed, it was refreshing.

Every time you saw it you thought of Lucio. He had truly put thought into this gift, where can you even find an unsharpened dagger? You had been convinced that the only thing that would cure the bullying was time, but here it was. The man was magic.

He was always doing that, giving you things sure, but also coming up with answers. He could help you out of any situation and just smile nervously like it didn't happen. It made you wonder how much he'd had to squirm out of for him to pick up such a skill. How much he'd smiled through.

He was always smiling, it seemed.

You were excited as you rode the magic elevator to your assignment. You had practically no work in the facility anymore and had moved to caring for Lucio full time. At his request of course. In any other circumstance this would worsen the teasing when you were down there, but remember the dagger. You practically threw open his door when you got there, Mercedes and Melchior trotted behind you. Equipt with their brand new mask-muzzles to keep them safe.

"Morning Beautiful! I brought you a surprise" You called cheerily. Despite it being a supposed surprise, Mercedes and Melchior were through the door and all over the Count before you'd finished your greeting.

"MY BABIES!!" Lucio squeezed the dogs tight around their necks, one dog in each arm. The borzois put up with it for a minute but eventually started squirming and whining to be released. He reluctantly let them go and moved to petting their long white fur as you set your stuff down. "I thought they were at risk of getting sick?"

"Check out their new threads, no more risk" you said smugly as the dogs pawed at their muzzles. Lucio was beyond happy, scritching them and cooing nonsensically.

"Babies babies babies, did you miss me huh? All alone without you, oh you haven't been hunting in forever. Poor pups."

"So today I was thinking we could take your vitals quickly and then maybe try some writing."

Lucio stopped for a moment, hesitant. He could read, and he wouldn't take criticism on that, but writing was not a skill he possessed. He had been left handed before...well he just never really was able to learn. You sit down softly on the bed next to him and hold out your hand. He knows the drill by now, putting his hand willingly in yours. You feel for a pulse and count.

Lucio's still making that concerned face. He hated confronting things he's bad at, you know that, but he should know by now you only mean to help. His brow pinches slightly as he absent-mindedly rubs Mercedes' ears. His unbrushed hair falls in his face, and his pale skin flushes just so lightly on his cheeks and nose. He stops petting Mercedes for a moment to tuck the fallen hair behind his ear, the ear with the freckle just below it on his neck. He almost looks like a painting.

You weren't counting, shit, how long had you not been counting? Heart stuttering in embarrassment you restart, hoping he doesn't notice the delay.

Reaching for the same metal cup you always use you crawl farther onto the bed to listen to his lungs. His breath hitches like always but he says nothing. It's almost worse, not knowing what he's thinking. His lungs sound worse, there's no getting around that.

Something presses the back of your neck so suddenly that you shiver and jump. Whipping around you see Melchior sitting behind you, trying to sniff you though the cloth covering his snout. You laugh lightly and give him several good pats before moving to continue your work.

Finally you sit beside Lucio with your notebook and offer him a quill. He eyes it like one might a poisonous spider.

"You don't have to if you don't want to," you say softly. He looks from the quill to you and his expression softens. Your face goes hot at the look. He takes the quill from your gloved hand, gingerly holding it in his metal one.

"What am I thinking" he mumbles to himself, but you catch it.

"Good question" you shoot back and he jumps, not expecting you to have responded. "What are you thinking?" He looks like he might make something up for a moment before seeming to think better of it.

"I was thinking...what am I thinking? You're not trying to embarrass me" he turns so red his hair stands out like strawberry leaves, but still he remains firm with his story.

"I want to help you because you said you regretted being unable to write. It's up to you" you speak frankly. The balls in his court. With a resolute shake of his head he responds.

"Yes I want to learn."

"Very good, which hand is your dominant?" You offer the notebook to him. He takes it, and you already regret the phrasing as you see a cheeky grin starting.

"Care to find out?" He hums tauntingly. Tongue darting out to lick at his teeth-baring grin. You watch, mesmerized, as his smile splits open and his teeth take hold of his bottom lip. His eyes skim you indecently.

Get ahold of yourself man, he's made jokes before.

"Another day," you choke, but it isn't convincing. He looks elated that he was finally cracking you. "You know what I meant, Lucio"

"Yeah…" his face goes serious again, eyes fixing on the quill held clumsily in his prosthetic hand. "My left…"

Oh.

You look from the quill all the way up his arm to where the prosthetic supposedly connects. Could that work? He'd had it for a long time, and it acted like a normal arm. Maybe he could pull it off?

"Alright" you say after a moment, you take a quill of your own and demonstrate the proper way to hold it. He copies well enough and your confidence grows higher.

"So you just scratch the paper?"

"No" you laugh slightly "the ink in the quill stains the paper in whatever shape you choose" carefully you lower the quill to the paper and write something in loopy script.

"Ooh pretty, what's it say?"

You blink for a moment.

He doesn't know what it says? In all the time that he's been trying to learn to read, of all the things he's picked up, this was unfamiliar? You shake your head in disbelief but try to take it in stride.

"Why don't you copy it and I'll tell you."

It takes many many tries and a lot of explanation on how to form each letter, but finally he produces something legible.

"That's gotta be it, it looks just like it!" He exclaims, eyes skimming over his page of failed attempts.

"Yep, this one's good. If I read it in a sentence I wouldn't look twice." You say warmly. He visibly puffs up at the praise, no doubt thinking himself the most gifted writing student ever.

"So?" He asks. You decide to feign ignorance for a moment longer.

"'so' what?" You ask innocently.

"What does it say?" He practically explodes in curiosity. The dogs react to their masters yelling by getting up and tromping around the bed. Bouncing the quills and ink bottles onto the carpet.

"Oh great, I'll get it–"

"Forget it just tell me!" He grabs you dramatically and shakes you. "It's eating me Birdy!"

"Ok ok calm down!" You placate. You suppose if you put it off any longer he'll start begging.

Carefully you tear the paper around where he copied the word, separating it from the rest and placing it gently in his hand.

"It says Lucio"

He gets very quiet at that. He stares at it for a solid ten minutes. Eyes wandering from one end of the word to the other. Looking at each loop and curl as his smile grew wider with each passing minute.

"I wrote my name," he says finally. "How did I not know how to read my name?!" He smacks himself.

"That's what I thought!" You laugh, and he laughs with you at the strangeness of it all.

"You're the best you know" he leans in close, fingers closing around the piece of paper.

"So I've been told…" you pretend to examine your fingernails as he snickers at your response.

"I'm serious Birdy, when I get better I'm going to make you the most spoiled lover in the city." his voice drops as his lips drip promises. You always thought his words were a trap, trying to make you stay. Now your heart beat faster and your limbs grew warm. He was saying it because he wanted to, and he said you were allowed to like being spoiled.

"The whole city?" You say tightly, and his eyes light up at the response.

"No Birdy, I'll make you the most spoiled lover in the whole world . I could make you my Viscount." He wraps his arms around you and before you even know what's happening he pulls you smoothly into his lap. "Whaddya say?"

He could very well make a recovery, you firmly believe he could, but something else made your face fall. He said Viscount…

He was the Count…

There was a Countess.

You don't know if it hadn't occurred to you  before, or if it was just relevant now that you'd begun finding him unbearably attractive. But there was no overlooking the fact.

"Lucio...you have a wife"

Lucio starts suddenly, as if he'd forgotten for a moment as well.

"So?" He smiles nervously. "It's not like Noddy and I are exclusive." You shake your head and rise from his lap, standing over him for a moment with one leg planted on either side of his.

"You have a wife Lucio, I am your doctor " you shake your head again slowly as he looks helplessly up at you. "There's no way you spin it where this will work."

You feel like a fool, you couldn't pursue this. There were so many things wrong, so many factors. Lucio doesn't respond, but he doesn't look upset either. He looks decided.

What was he planning?

[saventhhaven]

Fright Night - Part 1

Pairing: none

Tags: Halloween, mystery

Word Count: 1,663

A/N: I realize the tags are very vague, but I’m trying hard not to spoil anything xD

(Gif not mine)

You dug your hand into the bowl of popcorn again, stuffing the buttery goodness in your mouth with an obnoxious crunch as you binged your favorite show. After spending all day rushing around the house taking care of odds and ends, you were ready to fully enjoy the glorious fact that you didn't have to do a damn thing for the rest of the night. Actually, you didn't have a single thing to do over the next couple of days - you had made sure of that. Work had finally approved your request off, so you had the next week to yourself. You smiled giddily. You knew your wallet was going to be hurting when you got the paycheck, but still, a week off was a feeling unlike any other. It was a feeling of knowing that you could stay up as unreasonably late as you wanted without having to drag your ass out of bed the next morning. And that was exactly what you planned to do.

The eerie glow of your television was the only source of light in the living room - just how you liked it on nights like these. Currently, you were buried under a pile of blankets, and a pint of ice cream was within your reach. Oh yeah. This was the life. Just as your favorite episode started up, something triggered the motion-sensor light in your back yard, causing bright light to stream through the nearest window. You frowned, leaning over the arm of the couch to peer outside. Moving across the grass like a tumbleweed was your culprit - a small branch with leaves that rattled as a result of the strong breeze. You snorted. Talk about a classic case of "just the wind." After a few minutes passed, the light went on again, and this time, you caught a flash of movement that was gone almost as quickly as it came.

"What the hell?" You placed the bowl of popcorn on the coffee table as you stood, the pile of blankets abandoned, and the tv forgotten. Squinting intently into the yard, you scanned the area for any sign of more movement until the light automatically turned off. That light went up without any problems almost a year ago, and it had worked perfectly up until now. "Friggin' weird," you muttered to yourself, shaking your head as you made your way back over to the couch. Maybe it needed a new set of batteries or something. Before you could even sit back down, the light clicked on again, catching the same blur of movement as before. "All right, that's it." You knew exactly what this was. Halloween was just under a week away, and neighbors had been complaining about kids starting to pull their mischief night pranks. If one of those little assholes was doing something in your yard, there was gonna be hell to pay. "Hey!" you shouted, leaving the comfort of your warm home and moving out onto your back porch. Of course, this would happen as soon as you finally got comfortable. You were pissed. "You little twerps better get out of here!" twerps was not a word you usually used, but you figured it was probably socially frowned upon to call minors fuckers. 

When no one came forward at your screeching, you stepped off of the porch, the dewy grass dampening your feet as you stomped into the middle of the yard. "You're trespassing!" you continued, waiting for a response. Nothing. The light turned itself off. You let loose a sigh as you stood in the total darkness, feeling like an idiot. Maybe you were finally losing your mind. Turning back around, the light switched on in response, and your heart almost stopped beating. Standing directly in your path back into the house was something unexplainable and terrifying. A human figure with yellow, almost-green eyes, sharp claws where fingernails should have been, and pointed fangs. You stood there, frozen. This couldn't be happening. There was no way this was real. It had to be some freak in a costume, right? The creature's lips pulled back in an aggressive snarl, showing off its fangs as a guttural growl erupted from its throat. Oh, fuck. You let out a petrified scream as the creature launched itself at you. Running was useless - it was too fast. You had barely taken a step back when the creature tackled you to the ground, still shrieking bloody murder, and everything went dark.

"Hey." Sam looked up from his book as Dean leaned over to look at him through the drivers-side window. "I'm gonna get some beer for later. You want anything from inside?"

"No, I'm good."

"All right, but when you decide you want a snack an hour from now, I don't want to hear it." Sam rolled his eyes at his brother. Some things never changed. The boys had spent the past couple of days at Jody's house. It had been a while since they had seen her, and it was her birthday, so it was the perfect excuse to take a few days off and catch up. The Winchesters lived and breathed crazy, but it was the small, normal things like that that made their lives feel just a little less crazy.

A few minutes later, Dean came back out with a six-pack and... a huge bag of candy? "Catch." He tossed the candy through the open car window to his brother, who frowned.

"Dude." Dean climbed into the car, looking over at Sam.

"What? Tomorrow's Halloween, Sam."

"Yeah, but that doesn't mean you have to-" The older Winchester ripped open a mini candy bar, stuffing it into his mouth and chewing it with a satisfying crunch.

"Sorry, I can't hear you over the Halloween spirit." Sam let out a sigh of displeasure, but he couldn't say he was surprised. His older brother had always loved Halloween, though he never really understood why. After all, their whole life was pretty much a horror movie. "Oh, check this out." Dean handed his phone to Sam, who set aside his book on Egyptian mythology to read the article he had pulled up.

"'Body found?' Is this from today?"

"Uh-huh," Dean answered. "It was on the local news inside. I was thinking we could check it out since we're already in town."

"Really? Why?"

"Why not? We already have everything we'd need in the trunk. Fake badges, emergency suits." Sam shook his head as he gave the phone back to his brother.

"No, Dean, I mean, why? They're calling it an animal attack. Maybe it's not our thing this time." Dean frowned.

"Yeah, okay, an 'animal attack.' Sam, the body was found in the middle of a smalltown neighborhood, and the closest set of woods is like twenty minutes from here. C'mon, let's at least look into it." Sam glanced longingly over at his book. He had been trying to finish it for weeks. And besides, he had just gotten to the chapter on Horus losing his eye in battle, and how he used it to bring Osiris back to life after- "Sam?" He sighed.

"Yeah, all right."

It was mid-afternoon by the time the boys finally got to the morgue. They had stopped at the sheriff's office beforehand to gather information, and went through the whole, "why is the FBI interested in an animal attack?" spiel. But after that, the sheriff was more than happy to comply with the standard routine questions. As it turned out, the body had been found by a woman in her own back yard.

"Right through here, agents." The pathologist led Sam and Dean into the morgue, where she gestured to the body, covered by a white sheet on an examination table in the middle of the room. "I'll be right outside if you need anything." Sam shot the woman a charming smile.

"Thanks." As soon as she left the room, though, his smile faded away, and he was all business. "All right." He pulled on a pair of rubber gloves as he moved over to the table. "Let's see what we've got here." Sam pulled the sheet away, and the two boys stepped closer to examine the young girl's body. At the sight of her wounds, Dean sucked in a lungful of air through his teeth. The Winchesters had seen their share of horrifying things over the years, but this was bad.

"God," Dean breathed. "Whatever did this ripped her to shreds. Sure as hell looks like our kind of thing. I'd say it's pretty safe to put our money on a werewolf." Sam gingerly moved small ribbons of torn flesh out of the way and frowned.

"Last I checked, werewolves don't leave the heart intact."

"What?" Dean went over to his brother's side of the table in disbelief. "Okay, what the hell?" The younger Winchester shook his head.

"I don't know." Mimicking a clawing motion, Dean's hand hovered over the girl's body. He sighed in exasperation and pulled off the rubber gloves with a snap.

"Those are definitely werewolf claws," he determined. "The wounds match up right." Sam moved the sheet back over the girl again as he nodded thoughtfully.

"Maybe."

"Nuh-uh," Dean argued. "There's no 'maybe' about it." He pointed back at the table to emphasize his point. "I know what a werewolf victim looks like, Sam, and that's it. Sure, it's a lot worse than usual, but that's friggin' textbook!" Holding his hands up in a placating manner, Sam glanced over his shoulder to make sure his brother's volume level hadn't attracted any unwanted attention.

"Look, I'm not saying you're wrong, but the heart's still there. Taking the heart is trademark werewolf, Dean, what else do you want me to say?" Dean let out a huff of air as he paced, lost in thought. Finally, he stopped, nodding to himself as the answer popped into his head.

"We gotta talk to the lady who found the body."

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[a-man-adrift]

Family

In Which Adrift Writes Down Some Things That Occurred to Him when Prompted By @meflashfanwork​’s August Event, And Discovers He Is A Plot-Driven Writer.

Seriously, it was surprisingly hard to finish this (to the point that the next chapter of The Anti-Agathics War will be delayed, sorry…) because there was a constant little voice in my head saying “OK, but what’s going to happen?  When’s it going to start?  Who cares?”

OK, if that hasn’t driven you off, here it goes: Liara meets Phil Shepard’s surviving family.  Check it out on AO3, on ff.net, or...

There was a hand on his chest, was the first fact that impinged itself on his awareness as Shepard awoke. By its blade it rested gently there, its little finger loosely curled and half-buried in the bed of wiry black hairs it had found. The skin of the hand was blue, darkening to a pale violet beneath the fingernails. Shepard had to breathed deeply to arrest a sob that bade fair to break loose when it came to him that he could remember trimming those very nails to their utilitarian position, with their edges behind the pads of the fingertips, where they would pose no danger to white gloves donned at the behest of a librarian about to bring a treasured codex out for consultation, nor scratch a Prothean artefact when examining it in a museum, or — and Shepard could remember exulting in the experience — the first time this very hand and its fellow had liberated such a find from fifty millennia of imprisonment in the soil of an uncharted world.

The implications weighed on him. Delightfully, to be sure, as delightfully as Liara’s meagre weight leaned against the left side of his body as they lay there, her head pillowed on his shoulder, but they weighed on him nonetheless. Her weight was too meagre, was the next thought that bubbled to the surface of his mind: he could remember absorbing herself in surveying a dig-site, staking out the exact spot where the next trench would go, then turning back to the last one, abandoning heavy equipment in favour of shifting the soil using her biotics, then by hand, then brushing or blowing the dirt away as she reached the right stratum; finally, Shepard remembered noticing that the local star had passed overhead too many times for one who still had not eaten or slept, even taking into account the short day-cycle.

Liara stirred, detaching herself from Shepard’s site and moving her head to her own pillow. Shepard looked up at the ceiling a beat longer, fighting free of the toils of a new and beguiling past, then turned onto his side to face an infinitely more beguiling present and future.

God, you’re beautiful. Shepard’s body arched as for a crazy moment Liara’s eyes seemed wide and blue enough for him to dive bodily into. A smile quirked her lips as she considered the mental image, though he’d done nothing more to communicate it than lean forward slightly. His voice when he finally spoke was a lost-little-boy whisper of wonder:

“We don’t have to say anything, do we?”

She smiled indulgently. “No, we don’t, but it is customary to. It will help us remember which of us is which.”

No smirk, no sarcastic lilt in her voice: Shepard remembered a sex-ed. class Liara had taken and realised before she had finished speaking that she was serious. He gulped.

“I…” he began, and this time Liara really did smirk as his realisation that he couldn’t think of anything to say was written plainly on his features. She came to his rescue.

“You made it easy,” she whispered. “I wanted this so much… so soon. I came so close to… to offering… you know” — He nodded. — “…that I scared myself. But you waited… and then when we joined, that first time…” Her voice became little more than a breath, shaped into hints at speech sounds by her lips as he watched them, enthralled. “…it was like coming home.”

Shepard still couldn’t quite believe that, but the part of their joint consciousness that had been Liara had patiently spent hours the night before insisting that, however many dark places there might be in his memory, he still had her trust and her love, and — there was the real sticking point — he still deserved them. No need to rehash that little debate again.

“I love you.” He said simply.

She smiled. He felt like his heart would stop. “I love you too.” He was sure it would. She grinned at the look in his face, snaked both arms around him and pulled him in for a kiss. Turned out he survived. He put his own arms around her and felt her cheek rub against the line of his jaw as she luxuriated in the feeling of enveloped — he knew she loved the sheer width of his shoulders — he shivered as she made a spine-tingling purring noise and her warm breath tickled his ear.

“We need to go. We’re probably already late.” He rubbed his cheek against hers.

She tightened her arms around him. “Yes, we should.” They kissed some more.

They cuddled a little longer, then with infinite reluctance Liara broke the embrace and got out of bed. Like a sparking, intermittent electrical contact, Shepard felt his always-sluggish sexual response flicker to something approaching life as he watched her disappear into the bathroom in all her naked glory. The feeling was gone as soon as it had come, and he stretched for a bit, then rolled lazily out of bed, grinning to himself — and not for the first time — over the fact that he had at last found someone who didn’t expect anything more from him. As he sorted through their clothes and listened to her making a brisk toilette, an implication occurred to him.

“You look so… human, or maybe humans look asari… you know what I mean. It can’t be a coincidence, can it?”

“Actually,” she called out over the sound of the running tap, “we’re all hideous tentacle monsters, using our insidious mind powers to seduce honest colony kids.”

“Ah,” he returned her deadpan tone as they passed one another in the doorway of the bathroom, “that would account for it.” He dropped a kiss on her nose, and went for his own wash and brush-up.

“Actually actually,” she called out to him as she got dressed, “I’ve often wondered: given the morphological similarities between humans and asari, quarians and turians, fauna generally on life-bearing worlds throughout the galaxy… After what happened to you on Eletania, we know the Protheans watched us. Maybe they did more than watch.”

“Mmm.” Shepard acknowledged the theory through a mouthful of toothpaste. He couldn’t think of an intelligent contribution to make, so he simply finished washing up and went to get dressed, enjoying the comfortable silence.

“Uh, hi.” Shepard looked up from under bashfully lowered brows and spoke the words sheepishly, making him, did he but know it, adorable in the eyes of the woman he spoke to. Liara stood to one side on the threshold of the woman’s home and appraised her: she was one of the tallest human women Liara had ever seen, overtopping her and Shepard (who were much of a height) by about half a head. She was lean, had warm brown eyes to Shepard’s blue, and her black hair was liberally threaded with grey. The one feature she really had in common with her nephew was their skin tone: so pale it was almost pearlescent.

“Hi yourself,” she finally said when it became clear that Shepard was momentarily tongue-tied. When he failed to return that serve she spoke more to fill the silence: “You know, you look a lot like a fellow I saw on the news — Commander Shepard, his name was. I remember, ’cause it had me thinking: my sister, now, she married a fellow named Shepard, and I did hear that they had a son who’d be about the age of this Commander fellow, but of course I wouldn’t know anything about that now.”

By the time she’d finished, Shepard was grinning boyishly, and had found his voice. “How are you doing, Aunt Kathie?”

“How am I doing, he asks. Well, now, since it’s been a little while, you’d better come in and sit down while I catch you up on the news.” Shepard and Liara stepped over the threshold, and Aunt Kathie called out “Liam! You’ll never guess who’s here!”

From rather closer at hand than the volume of his wife’s call would have suggested, a wry baritone made itself heard, announcing William’s presence before he turned the corner and presented himself to view; “With you prattling on at the top of your lungs and not letting him get a word in edgewise, I think I could take a shrewd guess. How are you, there, lad?”

Shepard nodded to his uncle. William was shorter than his wife, but still had an inch or two’s advantage over his visitors, and that not counting his vivid shock of red hair. “Uncle Will,” he acknowledged the salutation, and looked briefly at Liara before continuing with the formalities: “Liara, this is my mother’s sister Kathleen, and her husband William Keogh. Aunt Kathie, Uncle Will, this is Liara T’Soni.”

“Lovely to meet you, my dear!” Aunt Kathie launched herself arms-first at an only mildly startled Liara, enfolding her in a capacious embrace and planting kisses on both her cheeks. “I think we’ve seen you on the news vids as well, haven’t we, Liam?” Without waiting for her husband to reply, she made a sudden thoughtful expression, and went on: “Now, I do recall reading that some a… that some people from, erm, elsewhere can’t take human food or drink… Are you…?” Liara barely managed to start shaking her head before Aunt Kathie resumed her sunny expression and went on. “Ah, that’s grand! We can all have a nice cup of tea! Come on through!”

Shepard and Liara exchanged a wry look, recalling everything he’d tried to share with her to prepare her for the Aunt Kathie Experience, then looked up and were forced to grin sheepishly as they realised that Uncle Will shared it.

As Aunt Kathie filled and set the kettle boiling, thought for a moment and went rooting through the cupboards for the good china, she kept up a running flood of questions that would not wait for an answer, and sundry other commentary: “And how long will you be staying? Do you need Liam to make you up the guest room? I warn you, you’ll never be forgiven if you take yourself off again without seeing your cousin Maire: sixteen she is — as well you should know! — and after me for the same thing you were at that age, wanting to go off to England of all places and train for a soldier. Honestly, sometimes I wish I’d never told her Commander Shepard was her cousin Phil: maybe she’d wait and finish school first, but she wants to go be just like you. I don’t know…”

Shepard took advantage of the necessary pause as Aunt Kathie peered into the teapot, winced and went to rinse it out. “Speaking of,” he introduced his theme loosely, “I think I owe you an apology, don’t I?”

“Sure, and what for, child?” Aunt Kathie asked without looking ’round.

“For the fact that you haven’t seen me in over twelve years,” Shepard said quietly. “For what I said when you did.”

For a long moment Aunt Kathie was silent, pinching tea leaves out of the tin and dropping them into the pot with jerky neglectful movements. She drew a breath sharply in through her nose, as audibly swallowed, and turned to face her nephew, her eyes only faintly moist.

“It was only true what you said; it is a stranger I was to you… and you had something you felt you had to do.”

Shepard smiled gently: “It may have been true, but it wasn’t kind. I’m sorry, Aunt Kathie.”

For a moment, it wasn’t clear if she was about to weep, smile, grimace, hug him or box him on the ear. Finally it turned out to be none of the above: she snorted and smiled lopsidedly at him.

“Sure, and I thought you’d be back inside of a month or two anyway. You were skinny as a rake back then, and your big blue eyes the size of soup plates.” She looked him in the eye and spoke simply: “When you stuck with it, I was proud of you.”

All present took refuge for a moment in the low-key ritual of tea-drinking, perched on stools or otherwise leaning on the breakfast bar. Shepard paid particular attention to Liara’s face as she brought the cup to her lips: they could both remember him drinking tea and not entirely hating it, but how it would strike Liara’s taste buds was a question neither of their memories could answer. She had, of course, been raised to a matriarch’s exacting standards as regarded the social proprieties, so Shepard received no clues: her face was impassive. He kept looking at it anyway, as it was fast becoming one of his favourite hobbies. He let his lips spread into a goofy grin, drank in the sight of her for a beat longer, then took a sip of his own tea. His eyes met Aunt Kathie’s, and the smile in hers made it clear she had missed none of the by-play. He grinned at her, as good as admitting that he’d brought someone home to meet his family. Wordlessly, she took it happily on board, and changed the subject.

“You’ve picked the right time to come, anyway: Donal and Shivvy are both home for Christmas. They’ll be home in a bit… and thinking about it, you’ll see Declan as well if you wait a couple of hours. We’re babysitting the little one so he and Sarah can have a ‘date night’, if you ever did.” She pronounced the phrase as though it were from a foreign language she’d only taken a year of in school, then cocked her head on one side and made a suggestion uncertainly: “Would you ever let me call your cousins? Since you’ve come while they’re all on the plane, it’d be a shame if you missed any of them.”

Uncle Will had leaned forward, his mouth half open to try and save his nephew from being swamped with relatives, or indeed to point out that Shepard and Liara might be staying long enough to catch up with his cousins one at a time, but he was forestalled. Shepard raised a hand, and Liam was impressed to find himself abandoning all thought of speaking. My nephew the space captain…

“Go ahead, Aunt Kathie. That’s what we came for.”

“Will you two put your eyes back in your heads?” Aunt Kathie’s tone was no more than mock-scandalised, and the laughter of their brothers and sister was good-natured, but Siobhan and Maire went roughly the colour of beetroot anyway. The family sat in a cramped circle in the living room, eyes generally turned towards Shepard and Liara on one of the two-person settees, but the two youngest girls had appropriated the couch opposite, the better to pursue their self-appointed roles as the respective shadows of the variously exotic visitors. Maire was staring at her cousin with the hero-worshipping attitude Aunt Kathie had warned him about, but Siobhan, it seemed, had eyes only for Liara. Shepard smiled fondly as he saw a sympathetic tinge of violet suffuse her cheekbones as she watched Siobhan look away in minor mortification.

Aunt Kathie gently twisted the motherly knife: “Pay her no mind, dear. We don’t see many asari here.”

“No?” Liara enquired with mild surprise. “So far from the Alliance, I’d have thought your trading partners…” She tailed off as the Keoghs exchanged looks. They silently elected Patrick to explain in what he liked to think was an authoritative tone:

“Watson is an old colony,” he told her. “After first contact, we made a few painful mistakes before we knew what’s what out here in the Terminus, so we still rely on our trade links with the colonies nearer home. There are some newer colonies on the nearer side of the Traverse that rely on our trade, so the Navy,” he nodded to his cousin, who smiled gently, “keeps our lines secure.” He grinned as a thought occurred to him, and exaggerated his accent: “Besides, there’s a lot of Irish here, so we have to secure our corned beef and cabbage supplies, so we do!”

Siobhan, at least, was quick to notice that the eye-rolling chuckle that was Liara’s contribution to the general merriment was the exact mirror of Shepard’s, she had clearly needed no explanations to understand Patrick’s deliberate invocation of stereotypes. Siobhan reflected on what she’d learned about the asari in school, and her eyes grew even wider.

Aunt Kathie, for her part, had thrown her head back and fairly screeched “Go on with you! Corned beef and cabbage, he says!” As the general merriment died down, a tangential thought occurred to her: “Did you bring your uniform, child?”

Shepard let his brows knit together quizzically: “Erm, no… I mean…” he paused and glanced at Liara as something occurred to him: “we both brought armour, but…” he paused as he realised it shouldn’t have occurred to him in the first place; “…it’s not even Alliance issue, so…”

“You brought armour?” Aunt Kathie expostulated, briefly sidetracked.

Shepard nodded sheepishly. “This is the Terminus…” he raised a hand in Patrick’s direction. “I know you’ve been here long enough that Watson itself is pretty safe, but can you imagine how embarrassing it would be if something went down and the first human Spectre didn’t have the equipment to get involved?”

Uncle Will, at least, smiled a wry appreciation of the mental image, but Aunt Kathie was back on her theme, and unlikely to be shifted: “If your mother was here she’d want to see her baby boy in his uniform, I’m sure. And so do I!”

Shepard and Liara exchanged a glance: “Everyone’s here,” he pointed out to her. “I think that’s our cue.” He turned back to Aunt Kathie: “You’ll get the chance,” he told her as he and Liara produced a stack of five substantial envelopes each from an inner pocket and began to pass them out.

“Sure, and what’s this, child?” Aunt Kathie asked as she read the hand-calligraphed “Mr. and Mrs. William and Kathleen Keogh” on the heavy cream-coloured paper, but she had a suspicion, which was confirmed as she slipped the unsealed envelope open and read: “You are cordially invited: Dr. Liara T’Soni and Lt. Cmdr. Philip Shepard request the pleasure of your company…” Aunt Kathie threw her head back and screeched again.

When her eyes tracked back down, she beheld Shepard and Liara with one arm around each other’s waists, so candidly affianced that she wondered that she hadn’t suspected before. her eyes shone as she looked from side to side, and read over the shoulders of her sons: “Mr. and Mrs. William and Erica Keogh,” “Father Aidan Keogh”; her nephew had remembered every one of his cousins’ marriages, ordinations and life events with perfect accuracy, she was sure. “Oh, child… oh, child…” she kept repeating, overcome.

The revelation naturally divided the room into groups: Aunt Kathie, Roisin, Maire and Siobhan descended on Liara to bewilder her with bride-to-be cooing, the menfolk recoiled, and Shepard took advantage of the confusion to excuse himself in the direction of the washroom. When he came out, he found Uncle Will waiting for him.

“Congratulations, lad. She seems like a lovely girl.”

Shepard grinned and let his eyes do the lighting-up thing as he contemplated the future waiting for him at the end of his aunt and uncle’s downstairs hallway. “You have no idea.”

Liam smiled and shook his head, but then the clouds drew together across his expression: “I wanted to catch you alone,” he told his nephew, pausing to gather his words. “I just… thank you, for the loan I mean, and for helping out with tuition and all… I feel bad… I mean, practically the only time you ever hear from us is when…”

“Well, that’s my fault, isn’t it?” Shepard grinned as he interrupted his uncle’s pause, drawing a quizzical look. “If I’d come visit more often…”

Liam grinned back, and turned, half passing his nephew and placing a hand on his shoulder by way of escort back to the gathering. Or so Shepard thought: in fact, as soon became clear, Uncle Will was leading him to another room. “You’ll have a word alone with Maire?” he asked, and Shepard nodded gladly as he realised that the room was one of the smaller bedrooms, no doubt the one Maire and Siobhan had shared, and still did when Siobhan was home from college.

Maire stood and looked shyly up at her cousin as Uncle will boosted him over the threshold with an affectionate pat on the shoulder. He was forcibly reminded of Aunt Kathie’s remarks vis-à-vis eyes, soup plates, and the size comparability thereof: Maire looked slight at first glance, standing at about 5′4″, but a closer look revealed that she was more sturdily built than a look focusing solely on her pale, delicate features might suggest. Shepard had enough of the same genes to know first-hand that her pale skin didn’t necessarily mean she was an exclusively indoor sort — people related to her mother or his in general simply did. Not. Tan. But still, he thought, his blue eyes looking into hers, she was… very young.

He grinned at her and held his arms out. “Hi, coz.” She grinned back as they hugged.

“So, Aunt Kathie tells me you’re thinking about signing up with the Alliance?”

“I want to finish high school at AFC just like you did!”

Shepard gave her a searching look, as he tried to figure out how far “like you did meant “because you did.” “Well, you could do worse,” he finally said mildly. “How are your grades?”

“Straight A’s,” she told him with an embarrassed grin. He smiled back.

“Then maybe you should think about going to Welbeck. I don’t want to run my old school down, but the teaching’s definitely more geared to high achievers than at AFC. And it would put you in a great position to apply to the Academy, if that’s what you want to do.”

Shepard resisted the urge to sigh as Maire’s eyes narrowed in suspicion: “How come you didn’t do that?” She asked.

“’Cause I wasn’t as smart as my big sister,” he told her mildly, and grinned as she started. He explained:

“Your cousin Jen was army mad from the age of… I don’t know,” he abruptly realised, “say about ten? She started drilling with the colonial militia on her eighteenth birthday, and she was headed to the Academy, except, well… the raid happened.” Maire shifted uncomfortably as her cousin visibly made an effort not to remember the Mindoir raid. He went on:

“Look, my advice, for what it’s worth? Take your time.” He grinned as a thought occurred to him: “I was nearly seventeen when I joined up, so you can still do that and be just like me!” Maire rolled her eyes. “When you come to the Citadel I’ll introduce you to some friends of mine: some are Navy, some are Marines… I probably know people who joined the service in every possible way, so you can ask them all about it and work out what’s best for you, OK?”

“OK.” Maire couldn’t help returning her cousin’s broad charming smile as they went to reinforce Liara in her defence against the remorseless welcome she was receiving to the family.